What They Didn’t Teach You In School (Paris Zarcilla – SBTV)

Hi, I’m Laura and these are my interviews with some of the best people working within digital and social media. I only finished school a few years ago and what I found out since leaving was the amount of opportunity within the digital communications world. I wrote a blog post addressing ‘how I wasn’t made aware of pursuing a career in digital and social media’, which is why I am on a mission to do these interviews. I want to make young people more knowledgeable about career options and hopefully these will leave them feeling inspired and excited by what can be achieved. Also, hopefully someonewithin the education sector will read these to help with career advice.

Name: Paris Zarcilla

Company: SBTV

Job Role: Creative director at SBTV

Follow Paris on Twitter: @pariszarcilla

What is a usual day for you?

My roles are quite varied at the moment because I’m usually between directing music videos, project shoots, overseeing content that goes online and making sure everything looks good for our audience. I also have to make sure everyone uses the right logos! But at the moment it’s mainly music video shoots for me.

How did you get into your role?

I actually was recommended to Jamal Edwards. He saw my show reel and really liked it. I also had a few ideas on how to change some of the idents. I wanted to bring a higher quality to SBTV. I was just doing photography for them, eventually they let me edit, then manage projects and that became directing music video shoots which then just ended up with me being their Creative Director.

How do you see the impact of social media expanding at SBTV?

Well we are an Internet based channel so it’s incredibly vital and extremely important that we are always in contact with our audience via our social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. It is vital for us to continue on a day to day basis and also let people know that there is new content. It is pretty much the foundation of how we operate.

What do you see as the next big thing in social media?

The next big thing is already here, in ‘Facebooking’, ‘Tweeting’ and YouTube. They are the 3 things that are defining the Internet, if you ask anyone what the Internet is then they will say it usually consists of one of those 3 things. I think its more about developing where we are at the moment with YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and try to take it to a new level of some sort. I think we are in some type of plateau right now but I think there is still a lot more room for development. I think it’s going to spike again, and who knows when!

What’s the best advice you can give for a young person wanting to follow in your footsteps?

The best advice to is find out specifically what it is you want to do within this industry. I think a lot of peoples’ problems is that they are not quite sure what it is they want to do and that’s mainly because they just haven’t tried. The moment you do, which is a wonderful moment is the moment you can pour all your energy into that one thing. There are so many different approaches and different ways to getting in to what you want to do. For instance, if it’s just media, you have just got to go out and do it! You would be surprised how much you could actually learn on your own. We are in the age of information at the moment; anything you want to learn is literally at your fingertips. There are so many free online tutorials, forums and people on YouTube giving out information on how to do things. Once you have got this collective information then you have pretty much built up your own score of doing things. I think once you have found out how to do things yourself and you’ve learnt things from your own back then that’s when those lessons really stick in. So I would definitely suggest to exploit the Internet as much as you can. It is there for everyone to use and it’s the most information rich place in the entire planet! It’s bigger than a library! So whatever it is that you want to learn, it’s all there ready for you to grab.

 To find out more about Paris Zarcilla you can reach him on his Linkedin page.

Last week I interviewed Karen Campbell from Radio 1 and 1xtra. She told me about:

• What being a content producer for Radio 1 and 1xtra entails
• About being involved in Chris Moyle’s record attempt
• Why having your own blog can be useful

Karen’s Interview can be found by clicking here.

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